Month: March 2011

After penning yesterday’s blog post, I was tempted to do exactly two things: one, buy and consume an entire dozen cupcakes by myself; and two, do some research to see how other local cupcakeries here in Washington, DC, are faring in the digital space.

Since I was closer to my computer than to any of the neighborhood cupcake shops (the closest is half a mile from the FairWinds office – I’ve looked into it), the second temptation won out.

The cupcake trend has swept our nation’s capital over the past few years. I could easily rattle off ten different vendors that specialize in the petite treats. But if pressed, I’d have to say that the shop that started the mini-cake mania in this town was Georgetown Cupcake. On a given afternoon, you can walk by GC’s flagship store on M Street and see the line snaking up the block. TLC even decided to base a reality TV show, DC Cupcakes, on the shop and the two sisters who run it.

But earlier this month, a new player entered the cupcake field here in the District. Sprinkles, which claims to have opened the world’s first cupcake bakery in Beverly Hills, opened up shop in Georgetown a mere six blocks from Georgetown Cupcake’s doorstep. Debate has sparked over which bakery makes more delectable desserts – whose cake is moister? Whose frosting is creamier? For the sake of my waistline, I decided to look into a different aspect of the rivalry – who has the better online brand strategy?

Georgetown Cupcake seems to have its domain name bases covered fairly well – the bakery owns both GeorgetownCupcake.com and GeorgetownCupcakes.com. Sprinkles, on the other hand, owns both SprinklesCupcake.com and SprinklesCupcakes.com, plus Sprinkles.com, an invaluable keyword domain that has helped the bake shop dominate Page 1 of Google results for the term “sprinkles”. Sprinkles also pops up on the first page of results for “cupcakes,” which is impressive. If the newcomer wanted to assert its DC presence, it could register SprinklesDC.com, which is currently available. Strangely, neither Georgetown Cupcake nor TLC (or its parent company, Discovery Communications, Inc.) owns DCCupcake.com or DCCupcakes.com – both point to parked pages and have been registered since 2008.

In the social media realm, both bakeries own their Facebook usernames: Georgetown Cupcake and Sprinkles Cupcakes, respectively. The URL for GC’s Facebook page isfacebook.com/georgetowncupcake, and Sprinkles’ is facebook.com/sprinkles. Sprinkles’ 260,000 fans far surpass GC’s 92,000; understandable, given that Sprinkles is a national chain and GC is local to the DC Metro area. But Sprinkles also has GC beat on Twitter – whereas the DC shop owns@GTownCupcake, the West Coast transplant owns @sprinkles and @sprinklesmobile for its cupcake truck. Candace Nelson, the founder of Sprinkles, also tweets from @sprinklescandac and there is even an account for fans, run by fans, @sprinklescupcks.

So while the war over cupcake supremacy rages on, it looks like the digital battle goes to Sprinkles.

And it looks like I’ll be picking up some cupcakes on my way home from work tonight.

In my opinion, the worst thing that can happen to a cupcake is its frosting falling off. But after reading this article in today’s New York Post, I’ve realized that trademark infringement can be an equally harsh cupcake woe.

The current owners of the famous New York sweet spot Magnolia Bakery, Steve and Tyra Abrams, are suing the bakery’s co-founder, Jennifer Appel, for alleged trademark infringement, unfair competition and interfering in a contract. The Abramses claim that Appel, who sold her share of Magnolia in 1999 and opened up a rival shop, deliberately helped Greek socialite Nicole Kotovos open a knockoff of Magnolia Bakery in Athens, Greece, by giving her Magnolia’s recipes and business secrets.

Appel denies any such foul play, and in turn is actually suing Kotovos, claiming that Kotovos tricked her into divulging the secrets. Appel says she had no knowledge that Kotovos was planning to use the name “Magnolia” and had actually warned her against using it. According to Kotovos, Appel had acted as a consultant to open her store in Athens, but upon learning of Magnolia Bakery’s lawsuit, Appel terminated her relationship with Kotovos.

And just to fill out this cupcake lawsuit triangle, Steve and Tyra Abrams filed for an injunction to prevent Kotovos from using the domain name MagnoliaCupcakes.gr. Interestingly, Magnolia.gr and MagnoliaBakery.gr both remain available, but the article did not mention whether the injunction covered those domains as well. The Abramses are also suing Kotovos in both Greece and New York, and attempting to get her bakery closed.

It turns out nothing can kill a cupcake craving like a torrid legal battle.

As Japan continues to struggle with the aftermath of a devastating 8.9-magnitude earthquake and resulting tsunami, individuals, companies and organizations around the world are rushing to help in any way that they can. Unfortunately, there is another group swooping in as well, although not to aid the people of Japan, but rather to exploit and profit off of the country’s crisis.

These individuals immediately started registering domain names related to the disaster the moment it hit the news. Many of them then proceeded to create fake websites with links to third-party payment sites, in order to trick the good Samaritans of the world into thinking that they are making donations to tsunami relief efforts, when, in reality, the money is going straight into scammers’ pockets.

An example of such behavior can be found at donatetojapan.org, which appears to be a legitimate donation site. It even features a Facebook “like” button. The giveaway is that the site lacks any actual content or affiliation to an official charitable organization.

For now, if you would like to make a donation, your safest bet is to go through an organization’s official website, such as www.redcross.org, in order to ensure that you do not fall victim to a scammer’s plot. The New York Times has a list, with links, of Aid and Charitable Organizations through which you can donate to relief efforts in Japan, which can be found here.

Below is a sample set of the domains that have been snapped up in the wake of the crisis; all were registered on March 11, 2011. We limited our research to high frequency search terms and the .COM and .ORG TLDs. Had we gone deeper, we would have found many more domain names like the ones below:

japanesetsunamirelief.com
japaneseearthquakerelief.com
japanesedisasterrelief.com
japanrelief.com
japanesetsunamiaid.com
donatetojapan.com
reliefforjapan.com
japandonations.com
helpjapan.com
japanesetsunami.com
japanesedisaster.com
japanesetsunamirelief.org
japaneseearthquakerelief.org
japanrelief.org
japandonations.org
japanesetsunami.org
japaneseearthquake.org
donatetojapan.org

Oh, Charlie Sheen. He’s all over the media recently after repeated rants against Warner Bros. and his show “Two and a Half Men,” getting fired from said show, and subsequently suing Warner Brothers and Chuck Lorre, the show’s producer, for $100 million.

And just like when other celebrities are roiled by scandal, domain speculators have rushed out to register domains containing Charlie Sheen’s name and key phrases like “winning” and “tiger blood,” according to PC Magazine and Domain Name Wire. My personal favorite? LivingTheSheen.com.

For those who are scratching your heads at the “tiger blood” reference, see this YouTube video.

We’ve seen the domain rush that occurs around celebrities making headlines before, namely during Tiger Woods’ debacle last Thanksgiving. Go Daddy reports that 1,000 Charlie Sheen-related domains were registered last week. Sheen also reached 1 million Twitter followers in a mere 25 hours, breaking the Guinness World Record.

Welcome to the Internet Age of celebrity scandals.

It’s about a year until the Iowa caucuses, which means that the media have been buzzing with speculation about which Republican politicians will challenge Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election. As potential candidates start to play the “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t” game, there is one piece that many seem to be forgetting: securing their domain names for their future campaign websites.

We looked at some of the most popular GOP front-runners – Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich – to see whether or not they own key domain names to support a possible run at the presidency. In a recent CADNA piece about the domain names owned (or not owned) by members of Congress, we discussed how important it is for politicians to register their domain names and prevent others from squatting on their online identities. For one thing, owning their names as domains gives politicians an easy to remember platform that they can communicate to constituents. For another, preemptive domain name registrations can help prevent rivals from registering their names and using them for their own purposes.

A recent example from last fall’s Midterm Elections involved incumbent Democrat Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, and Sharron Angle, a Republican candidate running for Senate in Nevada. Angle had registered the domain name BobMenendez.com and pointed the domain to her own website. Currently, the domain resolves to the site for the Senate Conservatives Fund.

Apparently the five previously mentioned politicians have been too busy trying to decide if and when to announce their presidential ambitions to have paid much attention to this lesson. Only Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty and Mike Huckabee own their names as .COM domains (MittRomney.com, TimPawlenty.com and MikeHuckabee.com). None of the five own their name plus the phrase “for president” or “2012” – as in SarahPalinForPresident.com and NewtGingrich2012.com. Yet, all of those domains are registered, all by third parties, some going back as early as 2004.

Domain names that consist of personal names can be very difficult to reclaim once they have been registered, because many third party registrants can claim fair use rights to the domains. Politicians have it especially tough, due to free speech protections. So being a first mover and proactively registering domain names is critical, especially for presidential hopefuls.